I guess I am different from most of JU.  I graduated High School in Europe, and then we all split for colleges in the states.  Lots of friends.  We exchanged Mail addresses and went on our way.

I went to a high priced, but good school in Ohio.  But I wrote my friends.  WROTE.  This was in the 70s.  There was no email.  I had about 2 dozen.  I wrote them once a week.  I was on a work to study program.  I had to work to afford to study!  Yea, my parents did not pay a dime.  So I worked, and borrowed and paid my way through college.  All the while writing letters to friends and family.  About a dozen a week.  And me with the worst hand writing since Oog!

But it was a pleasure to get mail from them, and yes we had a competition!  I always won.  None of my fellow dorm mates were far from home, so they got some letters, just not a lot.  The only way I could keep up was with letters. As I was not going back to Europe on Spring break! (Money, remember?).

After the first year, I started at a theme park.  First year.  So we were all newbies!  And we had a great summer!  So we decided to write.  Another dozen correspondents!  My school mates gave up in the first month!  I got the best letters (just friends, but the girls would perfume the letters to make my fellow students jealous).  But to get a letter I had to write a letter.  Some of them are pure gold!  I still have them.  nothing romantic, Just friends talking, but we could write up a storm!  It continued through college.  Eventually I lost contact with about 90% of them.  I miss that.

Shortcut to today.

There is no letter writing.  I have 2 (soon to be 3) in college.  How many letters have I gotten?  Goose egg.  What about Emails (if you don't have email, you are, either dead or my mother!)?  About one a month.

one a month.  No stamp.  No writing (did I mention my handwriting got an f in school?).  Just a few words typed on a CRT or LCD.  and then whisked along the electrons of the Internet to where?  You recipient.

it is easy!  Piece of cake!  Boy do I wish I had that in those days. 

But no, I did not.  I wrote. 

Now even Emails are an imposition.  Kind of ironic.  Emails are not letters.  never have been, never will be.  Yet they are harder to send than a Snail mail.

"I don't have anything to say".  Yea like I did every week?  We talked sports, Alma Maters or just what we were thinking.  What happens in a month in a young life?  not really a lot.  But we wrote.  And we enjoyed every letter, and made sure that every letter was enjoyed.  We talked, in a snail mail way.  Something that does not exist in the email world.

And that is really the sad part.  Email is immediacy.  and Not legacy.  So no one knows how to do it any more.

Write.  At least not the youngest generation.  They have gone beyond email to chat and HRU. 

Kind of like talking.  I guess I am doomed to not understand.  Cause I really want to know HRU, every week.  Even if it is boring.  At least to you, cause it is not to me.

I wonder if handwriting will even be graded in the future?  I wish it had not been in my day!